It's Productivity Time! with UPvisor and Blue Ninja

In this episode of It's Productivity Time we talk about ‘Building connections that connect’. Connections are vital to help grow your business, your network and connections are your support system of not only potential clients and referrals but also support, mentorship and recommendations of tried and trusted suppliers that can help you get to where you need to go.

We discuss being lonely when running a business on your own and where to go to find connections with a philosophy of 'nothing ventured, nothing gained'. One of the main elements of building connections is building trust and being consistent. Follow up and be remembered by people, check in on them and keep notes of conversations you can go back to for reminders (that's allowed!). 

The ladies give helpful tips of where to find networks to connect in, and ways of reaching out to potential clients. 

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We hope you enjoy this episode of It's Productivity Time! For more information about your hosts:

Upvisor

In this episode of "It's Productivity Time" Taryn from Upvisor and Julie and Louisa from Blue Ninja talk through how to plan your year to be most effective in your business. They cover vision boarding, reviewing your previous year and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) as well as looking at the value you bring to others and making sure you're using those positives in your planning. 

They give helpful advice on setting goals and objectives and developing your business roadmap with a clear goal to success. 

As Taryn says it's never too late to start your planning!

Resources

In our last episode of 2021 we look at how to deliver innovative solutions as a business owner. It may sound a bit techy but that's not how the ladies approach this topic!

It’s easy to be swayed by the latest shiniest thing on the market so ensure that it works for you, if it will work on your particular platform and how much work it will be to ensure that it will integrate with the other elements you want it to. Just because it's the shiniest new thing on the market doesn't necessarily mean it will work for you so evaluate what you need alongside your potential investment - think is this right for me? 

You don't have to be a technical whizz to innovate your business, but think of who the least techy person is in your team and keep them in mind - if it's just you get someone who knows about what you need to help you, but make sure they have demonstrated skills and experience. 

The ladies recommend trying before you buy where possible and checking what you've tried out is what you actually end up with. Whenever you’re planning throughout the year, challenge yourself. You don’t want to get left behind by not innovating but also see what you feel comfortable with. If it feels too much of a risk then don't proceed, the only person who will know is you.

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We hope you enjoy this episode of It's Productivity Time! For more information about your hosts:

Upvisor

In this episode Taryn Koen from UPvisor joins Kristine Tudhope and Julie Taylor for a lively discussion on dealing with being too busy. 

The ladies reflect on what feeling busy is like! Then share some points about how to cope with it including:

• Turning everything off and putting yourself into 'airplane mode' - minimising distractions
• Using productivity tools to help you
• Outsourcing and getting external support when needed
• Prioritising and using that as a place to start getting on top of your list

Being busy is just a product of running a business and is very difficult to avoid, but with careful planning and acceptance of help when necessary you can manage the busy times and keep control. Don’t sweat the small stuff, manage what you can, and the rest will be done when there’s time available.

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We hope you enjoy this episode of It's Productivity Time! For more information about your hosts:

Upvisor

This episode is dedicated to streamlining your business. Are you constantly collecting new software and tools that are the latest deals, recommendations and then trying to get them to work together? It can be stressful. The time and effort it can take to review and see what each element is doing or not doing and how things could work together seamlessly can seem like a challenge.

Where do you start? The ladies discuss tools like mind mapping to get everything out of someone's head to see how things work. It's not only about one person, it involves whomever is in the process to provide information to get as much detail as possible to see the big picture. 

When should you start streamlining your business? We share our stories about how we streamlined our businesses and give examples of others. We also discuss automating business practices where possible to get the most out of your time and your needs. 

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We hope you enjoy this episode of It's Productivity Time! For more information about your hosts:

Upvisor

It can be tough to work on your own, do everything to run a business and come up with fresh ideas. Brainstorming takes time, space and needs an objective or goal of what you want to achieve. Brainstorming is an important part of the business journey to help generate new and fresh ideas, examine trends and refresh your products and services.

It’s also about innovating - you will find yourself left behind by your competitors who are coming up with new and exciting ways of supporting their customers and may also take yours, so it's important to plan. 

This episode discusses techniques such as Stop / Start / Continue; turning off all distractions or getting away and focussing on what your objectives are; and using something as simple as sticky notes to examine your planning in an organised way. 

Get out of your usual space, or use the space well where you are in the best frame of mind to brainstorm - it can be anywhere! 

The important next steps is to use your brainstorming to effect, making sure you capitalise on the time you spend to set deliverables from your brainstorming. 

Optimising business processes and automating operations isn’t just for large companies. If you want to focus on being the CEO of your company and grow, review your current processes and workflow. 

We recommend you look at the tasks you don’t find easy, don’t like to do or don’t have enough expertise, outsource these to people who can do them quickly and competently will improve your productivity.

Running a business is time consuming, and we discuss some practical ideas for improving business flow including:

• Understanding business processes and streamlining these
• Automating where possible
• Setting up strong Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
• Mapping processes and workflows to see how things fit together and looking for improvements
• Reviewing your processes regularly 
• Documenting your business processes and standardising where possible

Work with what you know, like and trust to get the job done. There are a lot of noise out in the business world and a lot of options when setting up good practices but keep it simple, keep it clear and you'll be great! 

To have a great team, you need a combination of solid yet flexible leadership, so that it can adapt to new and changing customer and colleague needs, and communication. Leadership needs to be visible and clear, with a culture of ‘no stupid questions’ to allow people to speak up.

In this episode UPvisor and Blue Ninja discuss how to move from a single person business to a team and ways to plan for that. They also discuss culture within teams and areas that generate bad experiences in business. 

The one take away from this episode if you are trying to grow a team-friendly business and things aren't quite going right is not to panic! Tackle the issues head on, stay calm and discuss the next steps. 

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We hope you enjoy this episode of It's Productivity Time! For more information about your hosts:

Upvisor

What do we mean by bringing meaning to data? Data has become a big deal for businesses to drive forward business. Data that is clear and of high quality allows you to make educated and informed decisions.

By analysing data you can bring it to life. This includes measuring your goals and targets, key performance indicators (KPIs) and allowing these to help you make good decisions. 

Are you collecting data you don't need, or shouldn't be asking for? Giving meaning to your data also allows you to make sure you are collecting on that which is useful to you. 

Who has responsibility for your data? Find out more in this episode. 

Resources:

Information needs to be useful and relevant to a business in order to be effective. By using the right tools, communicating effectively and keeping to your strategy you can enhance your potential success and meet your goals. This month is using information well, making it work and making sure you’re optimising your chances by understanding what the information is saying.

During this episode the ladies share their stories and discuss:

• The difference between data and information
• Why is having data so important
• Financial data
• When data is not useful
• Recommended tools for processing information 

By analysing what data you need to collect, you will be able to understand and interpret your information and make informed decisions moving forward. 

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We hope you enjoy this episode of It's Productivity Time! For more information about your hosts:

Upvisor

Customer journey maps give businesses a way of getting into their customers’ heads, helping them gain valuable insight and understanding regarding common customer pain points. They also aid in building empathy for customers, helping brands understand what buyers want and how they feel.

It's important to understand your customer journey including the following touchpoints:

• awareness
• consideration
• purchase
• service
• loyalty

Upvisor and Blue Ninja share some stories about user experiences they have shared, some positive, others not so positive. They discuss successes and pitfalls as well as customer responses outside of your control.

Some ideas to improve a customer journey are to automate the journey where appropriate, not being too reliant on bots, finding the right way to correspond and not guilting people into buying or making them feel bad for not purchasing - customers may support you in other ways.

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We hope you enjoy this episode of It's Productivity Time! For more information about your hosts:

Upvisor

Strategy involves setting goals and priorities, determining actions to achieve the goals, and mobilising resources to execute the actions. 

An action plan are the steps that will be taken to deliver the strategy. It is a living document which should be reviewed and adjusted according to the latest updates and situation. 

In order for your plans to be impactful they need to be SMART - listen to our previous Podcast on these here. 

How do you execute your strategy amongst the normal business hustle and bustle? There are some good tips included in the Podcast including Stop/Start and WIG - listen to learn more about those. 

Remember:

The vision is what you want to accomplish.

Your mission is a general statement of how you will achieve your vision.

Strategy is how to make these happen.

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We hope you enjoy this episode of It's Productivity Time! For more information about your hosts:

Upvisor

When we start a new year in business often the first thing tackles is planning. Why is it so important to do? What are the different ways to plan? In this episode we dive into those questions and more. 

Does planning equal goal setting? 

We talk through S.M.A.R.T objectives - 

Specific | Measurable | Achievable | Realistic / Relevant | Time-bound

Planning will guide on a business, team and individual on what they want to do and how they will do it.

There’s a great quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery - A Goal without a plan is just a wish.

References:

Join UPvisor and Blue Ninja for Episode 4 as they delve into Reporting tools and the issues users face with these. 

You may be pushing out a lot of content but you may not know if it's having the right effect. You should be measuring what you post, when you are posting and knowing that each platform has different requirements.  

Questions to ask:

• Are you growing your audience? (measure likes, clicks to newsletter etc)
• Are you selling products / services (measure purchase, clicks on products etc)
• How many people look at your blogs? – Google Analytics will give metrics
• Which of your content is popular?   

Scheduling tools built into different social media products will help, as well as paid products. Don't beat yourself up if you're not posting every day as you can reuse a lot of your content. 

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We hope you enjoy this episode of It's Productivity Time! For more information about your hosts:

Upvisor

This episode discusses CRM tools and the value of using these to upscale your business as opposed to doing a lot of manual information manipulation, which is automated in a CRM.

Tips for choosing a CRM include planning - be clear on what you want it for; set it up correctly for what you need; have a plan for how you will use it; consider what data you have; clean your data before importing; how will you report on your data; automate as much as you can with CRMs; map out how you will integrate other tools

Tools discussed:

• Hubspot
• Pipedrive
• Active Campaign

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We hope you enjoy this episode of It's Productivity Time! For more information about your hosts:

Upvisor

This episode covers the differences with Project Management tools such as Asana, Trello, Monday.com and other tools. 

Questions asked: 

• Is there a difference between tasks versus project management? 
• Is it worth considering project management if you're small? 
• Digital versus pen and paper - what works? Why use one versus the other? 
• Why use one tool over another? 

We suggest you start simple and get to know workflows and how to integrate your team into different Project Management tools. No matter how small your business is a project management tool can support your business functions. Develop processes about how you will use the tools and roll them out. 

Identify what your problem is first then find a tool that provides the functionality that will work for your needs. 

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We hope you enjoy this episode of It's Productivity Time! For more information about your hosts:

Upvisor

We're live! 

This podcast is about connecting businesses with productivity and discussing processes and tools to make running your business a little easier. 

This episode addresses the complexities of tools and the differences between GSuite and Office365 and reasons behind choosing to move tools. 

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